Backend Products
Get Out of the Main Current and Enjoy “the Edge”
Most of the rivers that I frequent all have the same general type of water current. In the middle of the river, the water flows fast, strong, and deep, but as you move to the “edges,” the current slows, weakens, and runs much more shallow.
Maybe surprisingly for some, most of the fish in river are not found in the main current. It takes too much energy and effort, if you’re a fish, to constantly swim upstream and fight a never-ending force (the river’s current) that is hitting you in the face continually.
So the fish in the river hold in what are called “lies.” These are more comfortable places at the edges of the current where the fish “lie” in wait for a tasty food morsel to come floating by that will be easy to capture in the slower moving water.
So what does this have to do with small Internet business?
Most aspiring business owners play copycat with their choice of online sales niches and methods. They see others do something online and decide they can do the same thing. No original ideas, no creativity, just mediocre copy cat businesses!
I always suggest that creativity and focusing on being unique is a better approach. Now I’m not suggesting you enter a weird niche or sell peculiar and rare products. What I’m talking about is adopting a unique approach in your business – even if you decide to sell common place products that many others sell.
Instead of jumping into the main current (doing what everyone else is doing), why not carve out your own niche at the “edges” of the main current where the competition is minimal? Where you can stand out and be unique in what you offer and how you present it?
Here’s an example:
It seems that one of the most popular “beginner’s” methods of starting out in IM (Internet marketing) is to buy a bunch of PLR material, slap it on a web site, and undertake to sell the ebooks and reports “as is.” I don’t have statistics but I’m guessing that 80-90% of these kinds of sites try to sell this stuff in the same manner. They are being copy cats!
Going to the edge of the niche would be to offer the PLR in a unique and original way, not as everyone else is doing. So here’s a possible scenario:
You purchase a PLR course entitled “100 Best Ways to Drive Traffic to a Small Business Web Site.” You find this same e-course being sold all over the Internet “as is” straight out of the box (your purchased download). The title is the same, the e-cover is the same, the content is the same in nearly every instance … no one wanted to change a thing … just get on with the sales rolling in!
Instead of doing what everyone else is doing, why not laser target a group of solo business owners hungry to get traffic to their sites in the local carpet cleaning niche? Or target real estate agents specializing in vacation home sales? Or target DUI lawyers?
But don’t stop there. Spend some time (or pay a good writer) to customize your PLR course to match your chosen niche. The more specific you get, the better your course will become. You will have a unique product tailored exactly (laser targeted) to a sub-sub-niche.
While the vast majority of PLR sellers will all be hawking the same thing, you will be at a place “on the edge” where you can target your audience and have little to no competition.
Yes, it’s a little more work to carve out a niche where you have to be creative and do some extra work . . . but the payoff will be there in many ways!
And by the way, once you modify your course to be specific to one niche, it becomes an easy matter of then changing it again and again for other niches too, as the core principles of what you’re teaching will be pretty universal across many niches!
Most PLR sellers will do a minimum of modifying, re-writing, re-purposing, and focusing PLR to a very specific and targeted crowd. They won’t leave the main current. They choose to compete with the masses. Of course, a few of the strongest competitors will survive in the fast moving water. Most likely they have been in the niche for a long time and are well-established with a current customer base.
I say it’s a smarter strategy, especially if you’re new to the niche, to move to the edges and use your creativity to carve out and establish your own sub-niche. Obviously, you still need to use smart niche research to find out about the competition and what “holes” or gaps there are in the solutions currently being offered to customers in the niche.
In addition, being unique includes not just being in a niche with few sellers — it also includes creativity in how you price your products, deliver your products, treat your clients, etc. There are a ton of ways to stand out from the crowd in every niche!
To your online business success!
Steve Browne
www.stevebrownedirect.com
Save